The present invention is of a method and a system for direct communication through a satellite for a ground transceiver, and in particular, for such direct, rapid communication between a remote ground transceiver and a management center for the purpose of transmitting an alarm.
Automated technology has enabled equipment which is located in remote, areas to be managed at a management station. Such automated technology includes sensors for detecting equipment malfunctions, security mechanisms against theft, and other monitoring devices for ensuring the proper function of the equipment without the presence of a human operator. These monitoring devices must be able to relay their findings to a management station, particularly in the case of an equipment malfunction such that an alarm would be required. Transceivers which are based on a communication through a satellite is often the best or even the only choice for enabling the remote equipment to communicate with the management station.
Such transceivers operate through wireless communication with the satellite, which then relays the communication to the intended recipient, such as the management system. For the greatest speed and ease of access, such communication should occur directly through the satellite between the ground transceiver associated with the equipment and the transceiver associated with the management station, without passing through one or more additional ground station devices for communication.
Unfortunately, such a system has the drawback of difficulty for enforcing billing and security requirements. For example, a typical satellite system could send all received communication from a ground transceiver to a remote gateway station which is closest to the intended recipient. Such a system has the advantage that authorized access and security is relatively easy to enforce, since the gateway could authenticate the intended recipient as well the identity of the transmitting party before passing the communication to its final destination. Under such a system, the unauthorized use of the satellite is much more difficult, and customers can be appropriately billed according to their use of the system. Thus, gateways are useful for ensuring that both the customer and the owner of the satellite have appropriate security measures.
Unfortunately, one drawback of such gateways is that the satellite must be within communicating distance of the gateway before the received communication can be passed back to the ground. For example, low earth orbit satellites typically have a xe2x80x9cfootprintxe2x80x9d, or diameter of the area in which service is provided by the satellite at any particular moment, on the order of about 3,000 kilometers. Therefore, the gateway must be within the xe2x80x9cfootprintxe2x80x9d of the satellite as the satellite orbits around the Earth in order to communicate with the satellite. Such a requirement can add significantly to the period of time which must elapse before the message or other communication can be delivered from the satellite to the gateway. In addition, the gateway must either rely on ground communication networks in order to deliver the message to the intended recipient, which can be slow and of limited bandwidth; or the gateway must retransmit the message to the satellite for transmission to the intended recipient, if the intended recipient can communicate with the satellite. The message must therefore pass through the gateway at least once, even if the gateway does not then deliver the message to the intended recipient through ground communication networks. An additional cause for the potentially lengthy period of time required for passing the message through the gateway is that the gateway also may perform authentication, which may require extra sessions with the gateway before the message is delivered to the intended recipient. Thus, the requirement for a gateway can increase the amount of time required for the transmission of the communication from the remote ground transceiver to the intended recipient.
There is therefore a need for, and it would be useful to have, a system and a method for direct communication from a remote ground transceiver to the intended recipient through a satellite, without requiring any additional ground communication network, which is fast, efficient, secure and cost effective since no extra ground devices are needed.
The method and system of the present invention enable direct communication to occur between a remote ground transceiver and the intended recipient, such as a management station, through a satellite. The system and method are particularly useful for the rapid transmission of short messages, such as alarm messages, from equipment at remote sites to the management station. The messages are rapidly transmitted by passing directly from the satellite to the final recipient. The satellite determines the information necessary for billing and optionally passes this information to a ground center for sending the bill to the client. Thus, the method and system of the present invention are able to unlink the process of billing from the process of transmitting the information to the final recipient, thereby increasing the speed at which the information is transferred.
According to the present invention, there is provided a system for automatically sending an alarm message from a remote location in real time, comprising: (a) a remote installation at the remote location, the remote installation featuring: (i) a remote equipment; (ii) a remote monitoring device for automatically monitoring a function of the remote equipment, such that if the remote equipment malfunctions, the alarm message is issued; (iii) a remote transmitter for packaging the alarm message in an alarm packet and for transmitting the alarm packet; (b) a satellite for receiving the alarm packet, for analyzing the alarm packet to determine a destination address for the alarm packet, and for sending the alarm packet to the destination address; and (c) a central management station having the destination address and featuring a receiver for receiving the alarm packet, and for analyzing the alarm packet to retrieve the alarm message.
Optionally and preferably the remote installation further comprises: (iv) a remote installation receiver for receiving a command message from the central management station; and wherein the central management station further comprises a central management station transmitter for transmitting the command message To the remote installation receiver, to instruct the remote installation. This optional but preferred embodiment enables a human supervisor at the central management station to respond to the alarm, for example, by communicating with devices at the remote installation.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a method for transmitting a message in real time from a transmitter to a receiver through a satellite, the method comprising the steps of: (a) packaging the message in a packet, the packet featuring a source address for the transmitter, and a destination address for the receiver; (b) transmitting the packet from the transmitter to the satellite; (c) analyzing the packet by the satellite to determine the destination address for the receiver; (d) sending the packet by the satellite to the receiver; (e) examining the packet by the receiver to determine if the destination address matches a source address for the receiver; and (t) if the destination address matches the source address for the receiver, extracting the message from the packet by the receiver.
Hereinafter, the term xe2x80x9ccomputing platformxe2x80x9d refers to a computer hardware system or to a software operating system, and more preferably refers to a combination of computer hardware and the software operating system which is run by that hardware. Examples of particularly preferred computing platforms include, but are not limited to, embedded systems such as devices operated by Windows CE(trademark) (Microsoft Ltd., USA) or Vx Works(trademark), as well as any embedded operating systems suitable for use with a satellite or other communications product.
For the implementation of the present invention, a software application could be written in substantially any suitable programming language, which could easily be selected by one of ordinary skill in the art. The programming language chosen should be compatible with the computing platform according to which the software application is executed. Examples of suitable programming languages include, but are not limited to, C, C++ and Java.
In addition, the present invention could also be implemented as firmware or hardware. Hereinafter, the term xe2x80x9cfirmwarexe2x80x9d is defined as any combination of software and hardware, such as software instructions permanently burnt onto a ROM (read-only memory) device. As hardware, the present invention could be implemented as substantially any type of chip or other electronic device capable of performing the functions described herein.
In any case, the present invention can be described as a plurality of instructions being executed by a data processor, in which the data processor is understood to be implemented according to whether the present invention is implemented as software, hardware or firmware.